Passive aggressive emails

[RubyRedmond]

How do you respond to passive aggressive emails? Do you ignore the passive aggression? Respond in kind? Call it out?

My instinct is to respond in kind (childish, I know). I know I should take the high ground and ignore it but I really struggle to reply kindly to such pathetic bullshit. I'm most likely to ignore the comment. The written form of 'if you can't say anything nice, say nothing'.

who is sending you these? what about communicating face to face instead.

But I personally take every email verbatim. So if for example someone says "thanks for your help" and I simply say you're welcome.

Sometimes, there're not passive aggressive, it's just the way you take them.

I saw a clip of a psychologist saying if someone is being passive aggressive, you should only respond to what they say, not what they imply. So I'd reply and just be brief and to the point, not point out their aggression

Who are these emails coming from OP? Need some context really.

Are they business emails or personal from family/friends?

That's a really good way of looking at it.

I'm not talking about a specific email or sender, it's more generally. Most of the time they are work related but could also be in response to a consumer complaint or simply a query regarding a service.